Donald Trump’s plan to build a glitzy Trump Tower in a bombed-out army HQ, destroyed by NATO in the 1990s, has sparked outrage, with historians and heritage experts fighting to protect the landmark
US President Donald Trump has rubbed Eastern Europeans the wrong way. The polarising political figure’s team has been pushing to build a flashy new Trump Tower on a historic landmark in the Balkans, sparking outrage.
Serbian historians are fuming at Trump’s plan to turn a bombed-out army HQ in Belgrade into one of his extravagant luxury skyscrapers. Heritage experts are refusing to let the former Yugoslav Army Headquarters be bulldozed, while the Serbian government is trying to bend the rules just to please Trump’s family.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his investment firm are behind the flashy project. Moreover, the controversial plan already has its own website, trumpbelgrade.com, which promises: “Belgrade welcomes a Global Icon – TRUMP, Unrivaled Luxury” above glossy images of a sparkling hotel and 1,500 fancy flats.
Pre-sales were reportedly due to start this summer in Serbia’s capital city, with the Serbian government racing to cut any red tape standing in the way. However, the Southeastern country’s top cultural heritage experts have been refusing to play ball and won’t lift the site’s protected status.
Critics have further argued that Serbia’s ruling party, the Serbian Progressive Party led by Aleksandar Vučić, is bending the rules to please Trump’s family and earn advantages with the US. Relations between the two countries are mostly cooperative.
While the US supports Serbia’s efforts to join the European Union, it wants the Balkan country to improve its relationship with Kosovo first. In addition, relations have become tense after the US put sanctions on a Serbian energy company because of its links to Russia.
Bojan Kovacevic, head of the Serbian Academy of Architecture, slammed Trump’s plan as “humiliating”, warning that if protections are scrapped without expert consent, it spells “the death of the [heritage] protection profession”, Balkan Insight reported. The government’s controversial “lex specialis” law, which declares the Trump Tower project “strategically important”, has been used before to force through unpopular developments.
“In this country, whenever you cannot achieve something legally, you adopt a lex specialis,” fumed opposition MP Uros Djokić. “This is a serious demolition of the legal system.”
Despite all the political pressure, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments is standing firm. Historian Nenad Lajbensperger revealed staff have been “threatened indirectly” with employment termination if they don’t cave in, but insists: “We cannot do it, and we will not do it, because we believe that the lex specialis is illegal; it is not at all clear to us how we can do it based on the current legislation.”
With legal challenges piling up and the country still reeling from a deadly building collapse blamed on government corner-cutting, the Trump Tower saga has only fuelled people’s anger over corruption claims and dodgy government deals.
The bombed-out Yugoslav Army HQ in the heart of Belgrade isn’t just any old ruin, it’s one of Serbia’s most famous landmarks and a powerful symbol of the country’s turbulent past. Designed in the 1950s, the striking modernist complex was hit by NATO airstrikes in 1999 during the Kosovo War.
The shattered building has stood untouched for 25 years, serving as a constant reminder of the night NATO missiles rained down on the city and of the scars left by war. For many Serbs, it represents a national wound that still hasn’t healed.
The UK played a role in the 1999 NATO bombing in Belgrade. At the time, Britain was sending its own warplanes and troops.
After the bombing, British soldiers were among the first on the ground as part of the peacekeeping force sent to keep order in the region. And this wasn’t the first time, UK troops had already been involved in earlier peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Croatia during the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
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